Monday, November 21, 2011

Who's Selling Huawei Products To The U.S. Government?

The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence recently announced that it would be conducting an investigation into whether the expansion of Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei and ZTE into the U.S. represents a threat to national security. I'm in favor of the investigation and in my opinion, one of the things that the Committee should investigate is the Huawei Symantec (HS) joint venture and its "Wingmen"; i.e., U.S. companies that have signed up as partners to sell Huawei Symantec products to the U.S. government and associated entities. Symantec has recently announced that it's selling its 49% share of the joint venture to Huawei however that raises the question of who will be servicing those accounts. It seems to me that it'll be Huawei by default. At least two of those wingmen are Dell's Force 10 Networks and MPak Technologies who recently won a contract with the University of Tennessee SimCenter which, in turn, caused several U.S. Senators to ask the Departments of Energy and Defense to investigate the reasons for the sale.

MPak Technologies Founder and President Mike Kornblum has openly said that "the performance of the Huawei Symantec hardware combined with Symantec software helped Mpak win deals with the U.S. government and a large contract at the University of Tennessee SimCenter: National Center for Computational Engineering." Personally, I'd love to know who in the U.S. government has paid Mpak for equipment made by Huawei and sold by Huawei Symantec through its U.S. partner MPak Technologies. The same with Force 10 Networks and HS other "wingmen". The House Intelligence committee should as well.